It is a Fourth Amendment concealed carry case out of the Federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals which held 12 to 4 that if one is armed (or is suspected of being armed) then one is also dangerous and therefore the Fourth Amendment no longer protects them once they have committed even the smallest of infractions, in this particular case it was a seat belt violation by a passenger in an automobile.

Notwithstanding the inebriated decision by the Federal district court judge in my California Open Carry lawsuit (Nichols v. Brown) in which district court Judge S. James Otero held that persons who carry firearms, even where it is legal to openly carry firearms are not subject to the protection of the Fourth Amendment, only one of the sixteen judges (Circuit Judge James A. Wynn Jr.) in this case, U.S. v. Shaquille Robinson No.: 14-4902, wrote in a concurrence that people who legally carry a firearm in public must surrender the protections of the Fourth Amendment under all circumstances.

Perhaps these two judges should form a mutual appreciation society?

Keystone Cops, 1912, Public Domain, Wikipedia

Not even the leftist judges on the California Supreme Court or the California Court of Appeals have gone that far, at least not since 1970 in a California appellate court decision long since rendered an anomaly by subsequent court decisions.

The courts have done much evil to the Fourth Amendment over the years. For decades the courts have allowed violations of the Fourth Amendment for a variety of frivolous reasons. Reasons the Founding Fathers would never have agreed with even if government police officers existed in those days and one could make a warrantless arrest of a person who did not commit a crime in his presence.

Prior to the US Revolution, only the King could order a warrantless arrest and the US was not ruled by kings.

In any event, a decision which eats away at the Fourth Amendment is different from a decision which renders the Fourth Amendment null and void. The dissenting judges in their dissent gave the attorneys the two questions they need to put at the top of their cert petition to SCOTUS:

(1) Whether individuals who carry firearms – lawfully or unlawfully – pose a categorical risk of danger to others and police officers, in particular, and (2) whether individuals who choose to carry firearms forego certain constitutional protections afforded to individuals who elect not to carry firearms.

The attorneys for Shaquille Robinson have 90 days to file a cert petition with SCOTUS or ask for an extension of time to file their cert petition.

Links to the decision and the en banc oral arguments can be found by clicking on this link to my website.

Charles Nichols is a proponent of open carry. In 2011, he filed a Federal Civil Rights lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s 1967 ban on openly carrying loaded firearms in public for the purpose of lawful self-defense. Oral argument in his case took place on February 15, 2018, before a three-judge panel of the 9th circuit court of appeals. Charles follows court cases relating to The Second Amendment and tells us what they really mean instead of what reporters, who have never read the decisions in the cases, say they mean.